MiningSector

Wireless networks are ideally suited for mines, since they cover large areas and the landscape can change constantly, making cabling difficult if not impossible.

However, mines are not easy environments for networking equipment to operate in, due to the hostile physical conditions including extreme temperatures, strong wind and rain, vibration as well as dust. It is necessary to use equipment that are fully ruggedized and can stand those harsh conditions.

Products from both P2 and Fastback are appropriate.

Mesh Technology

P2 has a patented technology called MeshInfinity, allowing many hops to be daisy-chained with minimal degradation of bandwidth. This daisy-chain architecture is also suitable to allow traffic to pass over pits and dumps. A fail-over redundancy, always-up architecture allows a high reliability for critical applications, without loss of data or excessive delays. The P2 solution is also not dependent on a central controller meaning there is no single point-of-failure.

Increased Reliability at Low Cost

The P2 products have a low power consumption and can be connected through Power-over-Ethernet injectors or switches. This enables the cost of solar panels and batteries, in areas with no AC power, to be minimised.

Long Reach

Using Fastback Networks’ E-band products allow transmission of data rates of 1Gbps full duplex over 5 Km, ideal for backhaul of traffic from specific areas of the mine back to a central location. Using Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD), latency is low and so are reboot times.